Visual information in a retail environment often takes the form of advertising content. Such content is inherently persuasive, and is typically designed to influence a viewer's attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors in order to create a positive business impact, such as increasing sales, strengthening brand awareness, or engendering consumer loyalty.
In 2002, for example, total spending on advertising content used in retail environments, commonly referred to as Point of Purchase (POP), was estimated at $17 billion in the United States and exceeded $43 billion per year globally. This level of spending has garnered increasing scrutiny among brand owner executives who are demanding greater accountability for their marketing investments.
The need for measurable performance is increasingly urgent as well, because the average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer has decreased to an estimated 22.9 months according to industry sources. Marketing leaders thus have precious little time to measurably demonstrate results from their marketing efforts. Marketing research, a sub-set of the research industry, has historically used correlational or matched control studies to evaluate advertising content performance against objectives. However, these “best practice” marketing research methodologies do not reliably reveal causation between the marketing message and the business result, as has been widely commented on by marketing analysis experts (e.g., Don E. Schultz, Market Research Deserves Blame for Marketing's Decline, Marketing News, Feb. 15, 2005). Even so, marketing research spending is currently estimated at $8 billion annually in the United States alone, which includes these types of studies.